Centro de Astrobiología

X INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF ASTROBIOLOGY «JOSEP COMAS I SOLÀ». ORIGINS OF THE BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LIFE

Proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and nucleic acids are the building blocks of all life form on the Earth, from simplest bacteria to human beings. Those biopolymers are built by monomers more or less complex. How are they come to form? It is a question still unresolved. It is known that some of them can be produced in the interstellar medium, or in comets and asteroids that populate our solar system. Much of them came to our planet over its first few million years. Earth is a planet in continuous evolution from its beginning, and those chemical evolved to create more and more complex compounds, bringing the blocks mentioned above. The course will review the chemistry that occurs in comets and asteroids as well as chemical evolution on the Early Earth.